Blog originally posted in January 2016 and updated February 2023
When reading this please remember it was written and published 4 years before the Covid pandemic, something not featured in Back to The Future either!
If you were either not born in the 70s or didn't read this week's papers or social media you may not be aware that on the 21st Of October 2015 we surpassed the date in which Doc and Marty travelled forward in time in their DeLorean in Back To The Future 2.
So as the future has now turned in to history I’d like to take you back on a journey of their predictions to see which were correct and those not quite so, you may even say “Great Scott” along the way.
The Hover Board
The most famous of all predictions from the second film and though today you can’t buy a hover board like Marty’s you can buy a “Hover board” that has wheels on each end to transport you about today and Segways have been in the shops for even longer.
Wearable Technology
Perhaps the best prediction, Doc provided Marty with a pair of glasses that when worn included face recognition and information about what he was seeing. Google launched their glasses a few years ago, smaller and more functional than Doc's but were they a success, well perhaps they are an invention that should have stayed in the cockpit of fighter jets for the time being?
Video Calls
Used by Marty for business reasons in the film and at the time it seemed like a farfetched vision, “who wants to be seen whilst they talk on the phone?” being the objection in the boardroom. However video calling has reached in to our homes as well as offices and has enabled people from all over the world make contact with each other with their eyes as wells as ears and mouths.
Hands Free Gaming
Who hasn’t played on a Nintendo Wii and possibly laughed as Grandma fell over whilst playing tennis? Since then technology has moved forward with hands free gaming, but the Wii took gaming from the darkened bedrooms of children and some adults to the living room of the masses. Were the inventers of the Wii inspired by Steven Spielberg and movie’s script writers?
Tablet Computers
There’s a bigger chance that you are reading this blog on a tablet or smartphone than you are on a desk top computer, something that has changed dramatically in the last 5 years. Doc shared his plans with Marty using what looks like a tablet in the film much like we share Facebook now.
Finger Print Recognition
Something that has been in the movies for years, many Bond Villains have fallen foul of this very technology when the door they thought was secure wasn’t. In the film the technology was used for that very purpose, but today we think nothing of using finger print recognition to unlock our smartphone or laptop.
So far Back to The Future is shaping up to be a rival to Nostradamus, but they didn’t get it all right as there were some predictions that notably have not materialised, the biggest being very well known.
Flying Cars
If you’ve seen the first film you’ll remember its ending, “Roads? Where we’re going we won’t need roads”. Sadly the daily commute is still very much on 2, 4 or multiples of wheels leaving airborne travel limited to aircraft that are subject to strict rules and central governance. Let’s be thankful it is because without it flying cars could well have been the disaster that wiped out ½ of the population as they crashed in to each other and plummeted their occupants to their doom. So perhaps flying cars are to remain the preserve of cartoons like the Jetsons, for the time being.
Some predictions themselves have become obsolete because change happens so fast, yet the films identified the way that we communicate would change in the future.
Fax Machines
The second film had fax machines in all rooms within houses delivering important messages and pictures instantly to their occupants. Though this never happened exactly as they thought, most homes are now connected to the World Wide Web and those messages and pictures are instantly delivered to their occupants exactly as predicted, in the room of their choice.
Despite some predictions being spot on others were a little off and others bound by the practicalities of life we can clearly see how difficult it is to predict the future in fact it’s nearly as hard as travelling there in person.
What Does This Mean To Us?
Many of our day jobs require us to predict the future and its standard practice to look back in time to use those learnings to do so, fax machines were hardly new in in 1989 when the second film was made, and it’s stood us largely in good stead. We shouldn’t be afraid of stretching the boundaries, some of the “what ifs” can come true, if only in part, while some are simply beyond our imagination today.
Use your imagination, for example the worst case scenario or the alternate methods of communication and their impact on business and customers, when creating your business and resource plans and forecasts.
History tells us that those who do are regarded as innovators and leaders, those who don’t … well who knows who they are?
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